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In the time of the Crusades, the Ethiopian Highlands overlooking the Horn of Africa were confused in the medieval Western imagination with the mythical kingdom of Prester John. In fact Ethiopia embraces many different lands just as its landscapes are grandiose in their diversity. The people speak Semitic, Cushitic and Omotic languages and practise Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions as well as vernacular ancestor cults.
The first Europeans to reach Ethiopia in the fifteenth century were astonished to discover an age-old Christian church of a very special kind. Indeed, its enculturation in the Aksum kingdom dates from the fourth century. Related to the "family" of eastern Orthodox Churches, the Ethiopian Church was quickly isolated from the other Christian countries in the Middle East by the spread of Islam. For centuries, the patriarch of Alexandria named the Egyptian bishop of Ethiopia, until the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church was granted autocephaly in 1959.
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